It’s been almost three decades since Coal Chamber, the Californian metal quartet, came screaming out ofthe dead zone of Hollywood in the early Nineties. When singer Bradley ‘Dez’ Fafara and Miguel ‘Meegs’Rascónfirst met in 1992, these two hot-headed misfits first wrote songs under the name She’s In Pain,recruiting bassist Rayna Foss and drummer Mikey Cox. After renaming themselves Coal Chamber andhoning a unique sound and art direction, the band broke throughto public awareness with their gold-selling, self-titled debut album in 1997. A slot at the first Ozzfest and a management deal with SharonOsbourne helped to propel the quartet to national level.Over the next six years, Coal Chamber experienced several lifetimes’ worth of excess, makingtheir trajectory both unpredictable and stressful. Tours with Danzig, Type O Negative, Megadeth, Panteraand many other artists built their reputation, but substance abuse nearly derailed the musicians and intra-band tensions almost destroyed them. Two more albums,Chamber Music(1999) andDark Days(2002),came before their differing personalities finally drove them apart. Foss quit afterDark Daysand wasreplaced by Nadja Peulen, and after 2003’s compilation,Giving The Devil His Due, no-one expected tohear from Coal Chamber again, especially after Fafara embarked on a second career with the successfulDevilDriver.This made the 2015 comeback albumRivalsall the more unexpected, reasserting CoalChamber’s authority for a new generation of metal fans. International tours followed before the musicianswent their separate ways, but eight years later still, Coal Chamber is returning for live dates in 2023.You literally could not make this story up, and yet the 30 years of angst and adrenaline that makeup this band of survivors can be heard in every note on the albums in this collection. There’s a reasonwhy the word ‘Loco’ is so closely associated with Coal Chamber—and the madness isn’tover yet